Perhaps amidst the increasingly depressing state of the world, Jesus is calling us to learn the path of faithfulness from those who never win.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Temptation
Whether or not you can accept the idea of a personal devil, there are forces of evil in the world that are bigger and more powerful than our own inner flaws, but conscious and united, we are stronger still.
The temptations faced by Jesus reveal common patterns in the demonic temptations that we face in our own lives.
Lent calls us to faithfulness to God and we need to assess the direction of our journey, our call to ministry and also to meet our own demons.
Jesus resisted the temptation to force his will on the world, and he pioneered a pathway for us to similarly refuse the exploitation of power.
Jesus’s quest for reconciliation is far wider and more discomfortingly radical than our tendency to jump on the bandwagon of popular justice causes.
God invites us to live joyously, boldly and freely in the midst of mystery, but we are frequently tempted to grasp for something more tangible and certain.
Lent is a recurring reminder of the fragility of our discipleship in the face of tempting shortcuts and instant gratifications.
Jesus offers us vision of the future which sharply differs from that offered by modern economics, and we need to intentionally nourish that vision.
Whether we think of the devil as a personal being or as a metaphor, our call to put our trust in Jesus to strengthen our resistance to the temptation of expedient short-cuts is the same.
Lent is a time to walk knowingly into the wilderness, to face the Accuser and the wild beasts that emerge when we live out our identity as God’s children.
Jesus calls us to model a pattern of love and generous inclusion, and to avoid the demonic temptations of exclusion and pride.
God saves us by changing our hearts, but one of the great temptations for the church is to try to turn that back into a system of exclusion and control.
Temptations can hook us away from where we want to be, following Jesus, but perhaps we need them in order to discover who we are in relation to them.
Demonic temptations do not usually look demonic, but are usually a subtle undermining of our sense of who we are that cause us to grasp for quick fixes.
Jesus full humanity meant that temptation was real for him, as it is for us. Temptation is not in itself bad, but indicates to us that we have a gift of choice.
Violence must be a constant temptation for God, but in absolute love, God has vowed never to resort to it.
In the encounter with Jesus, our self-delusion and our scapegoating are painfully exposed, but with the possibility of forgiveness and freedom.
The Church will always contain more than its fair share of maliciousness, pettiness and nastiness, but the temptation to try to weed it out is a temptation to abandon the way of Christ and make things worse.
Our struggles against evil, temptation and suffering are all framed by the security of God’s unshakable love and resolve to bring us safely to fullness of life.